The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, on Saturday said he backs China’s right to host the Olympics after Beijing reportedly charged he was trying to sabotage the summer Games.
The statement came after media reports on Friday said China’s top official in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, had accused the Dalai Lama of trying to “sabotage this important event and spread rumours.”
In a statement issued in Dharamshala, the northern Indian hill station where the spiritual leader’s government-in-exile is located, the Nobel peace prize winner said “it is common knowledge that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has consistently supported the right of China to host the 2008 Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama called the Chinese official’s accusation “highly inflammatory.”
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Tibetan Party Secretary Zhang Qingli has said that attempts to promote the cause of Tibetan independence will fail, and has accused Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of never stopping to plot for a separate Tibet from China.
Zhang, the secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region Committee of the Communist Party of China, was speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People’s Congress, the top legislature.
“I have never heard that the Dalai Lama has refrained from wanting to split Tibet from China,” the China Daily quoted Zhang as telling reporters after a panel discussion by the Tibetan delegation.
